DC Metro Moms

The Shooting Range

As a parent of three small children in a townhouse community FULL of children, I'm only just starting to experience the anxiety of letting them play outside the safety of our own front lawn. At one time, they would happily stay close to home and never considered crossing the street to interact with the older kids. But now that my oldest is five and my younger two are three, I suddenly find myself lapping our block and crossing into the next cul de sac to hunt down escapees.

They're still a bit young to seriously join the roving gang of elementary schoolers on bikes and scooters. But when the games involve running through the woodsy common areas with plastic guns and gun-like sticks, the possibility for blending in with the crowd becomes more likely.

And as usual, my first concern is how my five year old with communication delays and all of the awkward social behaviors that accompany them will handle this. I worry that Oliver will opt to disengage and continue to play by himself in the dirt. I worry that he'll try to play with the other kids but be rejected. I worry that he'll manage to stay with the group but take their game too far and come across as aggressive.

What Would Pioneer Woman Think?

I often think about how much easier my life as a mother has been made as the result of advancing technology. Need a quiet moment to make a school-related phone call? Put on a DVD. Prefer the kids to read instead of watch TV while you clean the kitchen? Pull out the Leap Frog Tag.

I don't need to send my children outside to play unsupervised (remember those days when five year olds roamed the neighborhood solo?) just so I can find time for house cleaning and meal preparation. I have an arsenal of electronics at my disposal. Tasks that once took hours to do are now set into motion with the flick of a switch. No wonder we watched The Jetsons and really believed that one day, a full three course chicken dinner could be conjured up by pushing a few buttons on a box in the wall. I mean, I am from the generation that witnessed the dawn of microwave cooking. What wonders would follow?

How Do You Want to Be Remembered?

I do a lot of yelling. In fact, I often wonder if the neighbors who don't know me well assume I'm an abusive parent. Whenever I'm outside, I seem to be bellowing at least one of my children's names and threatening everything from time outs and revoked toys to cancelled trips to Dairy Queen. Whether or not I mean it (it's often the latter), I think I sound pretty serious.

Of course, my yelling is rarely angry. If anything it's just a necessary evil. When I'm quiet, no one listens to me. But when I yell, I have a much better chance of moving their attention away from the earth worms they're torturing and getting all sets of eyes on me.

Unfortunately, the result is everyone in a three block radius being made aware that OLIVER! or GEORGE! or ELEANOR! is NOT LISTENING! or needs to GET OUT OF THE STREET! or BETTER CLIMB OFF THAT CAR!

God - I'm loud.

Monkey in the Middle

I have three children born in the following order: Oliver, George and Eleanor. And as number two out of three, George won the title of middle child. By default of course, since he's a twin... But boy, has he lived lived up to it.

When I was pregnant with the twins, I knew that I was having a boy and a girl and that "Baby A" (the one who would be delivered first) was a boy. The order seemed rather inconsequential to me since the c-section that was looking probable would put a single minute's span between their individual entrances into the world.

So it astounded me when people talked about George being my middle child. How could he be Eleanor's "older brother" when they shared a birthday and the same 18 months' age difference with Oliver? It was just silly.

But - laugh as I did, I've also found there to be some truth to this. Because George engenders many typical "middle child syndrome" behaviors.

Good Old Golden Rule Days

Today, I visited the school that my five year old will be attending in the Fall when he starts Kindergarten. And as I observed the excitement of the children with their little can't-be-still-for-more-than-five seconds bodies, their colorful art projects adorning the walls and the competent teacher running the show, I was struck by one very powerful memory. I really hated school.

Okay - hate is a strong word. And I did enjoy certain aspects of school...but the tedious work of studying, memorizing and sitting for hours on end? I was never a fan. And while I suppose Kindergarten was kind of a cake walk, looking back, I can see how it foreshadowed the pressure and responsibility of the higher grades and higher education.

To this day, my math skills are pathetic. All of those hours with the algebra tutor? Wasted! I can barely remember how to multiply fractions. And while I always loved reading and plowed through far more of the Summer reading list than was actually required, I dreaded writing the reports. Memorizing definitions for tests? Pure torture.

So while I sat there listening to a story about Frog and Toad and their garden and then watched the kids puzzle out the answers to various questions regarding plot, their bright shiny faces began to blur. While they were jumping out of their seats to scream "seeds!" "soil!" and "water!" - I was thinking "blood!" "sweat!" and "tears!"

When is it time to stop picking your child's nose?

Because I do it all the time. Like every day - several times a day.

Sometimes with cooperation from the "pickee," and sometimes with resistance that requires a full nelson and lightning fast reflexes for success. But pick that nose I will. Because I cannot abide boogers.

It all started with Oliver. He was one of those snorty newborns. The first night he was home from the hospital, I had to use that suction bulb thing that I found by his head in the hospital isolette. Shortly after his birth, a nurse demonstrated the mouth suctioning I was supposed to perform on him periodically. But after the first day, I decided that he was in little danger of choking on his own saliva. I almost didn't keep the suction thing, but all the books said to steal everything in the room that wasn't nailed down since I (i.e. my insurance company) had paid for it. So along with several boxes of cheap tissues and as many panty liners as I could grab, the suction thing traveled home with me via a bulging bag of hospital contraband.

Pearls of Wisdom

One of the things we all do when we become parents is dream about what the future holds for our children. We think about who they are going to be. Or more accurately - who we want them to be.

Every night when I was pregnant with my first baby, I thought about all of the qualities that I wished for him. I wished for kindness and generosity. For self confidence and intelligence. For humor and charisma. For talent and creativity. And happiness.

Then he was born and I just wanted him to sleep.

But in my heart, all of those wishes lived on - and still do. And I tried to do the same for my other children. I had the same hopes for my twins, though a bit less focused.

By the time I was pregnant again, my first child was still a stinky sleeper, and I tended to pass out the minute my head hit the pillow. So there were no thoughtful lists chanted nightly for the twins and their own triumphs of character.

It was then that I gave myself license to tuck those dreams in a pocket where I knew they would be kept warm and alive. Even if I couldn't recite them by rote. Maybe if I wanted them enough, they would be imprinted in all of my intentions, and it none would go astray. It would be a string of pearls that would never break.

They're Playing Our Song

Have you ever heard a song that transported you back to a memory so visceral that you could close your eyes and feel like you were actually there?

Of course you have - we all have. Music has always been a well known sense memory trigger. And we can all call upon those few notes that evoke something very specific from our past.

When I close my eyes and think of Crystal Gayle singing Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue, I'm suddenly six years old and sitting in the back of our family car. Possibly driving to the dentist where I will be forced to endure a nauseating grape flavored fluoride treatment.

If I think of Bob Marley singing Is This Love, I'm 16 and at the beach - a little sore from sunburn, but why worry about wrinkles, as it won't matter anymore when I'm old...?

If I think of Al Green singing I'm So in Love with You, I'm 27 and marveling at how this once unlikely candidate for a boyfriend will soon be my husband.

But all of these time stopping, breath catching, overwhelming assaults on my fragile sense of the present are eclipsed by another, far more powerful one.

Like Somebody's Mother

This year, I realized that I haven't worn a one piece bathing suit since I was twelve years old. And it's not because I've been living the good life of giving the cast of The Hills a run for their money in the bikini department.

It's simply because no matter what dress size I'm wearing, I always look a little less bad in a two piece. I'm short waisted and I tend to carry any extra weight in my hips and thighs. And I've found that covering my stomach just draws more attention to that.

Even post pregnancies - I'd rather show a little stretched out abdominal skin than wear a bathing suit that doubles for a neon arrow pointing to my cellulite. And even more importantly, I kind of don't care anymore.

Back when I was a teenager and cellulite was just a twinkle in my genetic code's eye, I really did care. I wore a bathing suit for no other reason than to get tan, and would only remove my shorts while in a horizontal position where gravity was much kinder. If I wanted a magazine that wasn't within arm's reach, I would get dressed before getting up to retrieve it. 

Okay - that last one is a bit of an exaggeration. But you get the idea. I was a perfectly normal looking, exasperatingly self conscious and self absorbed young girl. And that's when I chose the lesser of the two bathing suit evils.

Who Do I Want to Be in 2010?

I've never been one to make New Year's resolutions. The ones I would make, I do make every day. "I'll start the diet tomorrow...I really have to stop yelling so much around the kids...I need to turn off the computer and spend more time building block towers..."

And none of them are easy.

But the eve of the new year always makes me a little introspective, as any ending-beginning does. So I find myself thinking about the kind of life I want to have and the kind of person I want to be.

When my daughter was born, it was the end of only worrying about little boys and their wants and needs. And it was the beginning of my tenure as a role model for what a woman should be.